The Telegraph reports that in a taped bedroom conversation between Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and a prostitute, Berlusconi revealed that he had found 30 Phoenician tombs on his estate on Sardinia. “If the presence of these 30 previously unknown tombs on Berlusconi’s estate is confirmed it represents a very significant discovery,” said Giuseppina Manca di Mores, a member of Italy’s National Association of Archaeologists.

A scuba diver spotted a group of stone blocks off the east coast of Calabria, near the Italian town of Squillace. It is possible the ruins may be part of the ancient Greek colony of Scylletium.   

Here are a few photographs of the Roman shipwrecks discovered off the coast of the Italian island of Ventotene.  

The luxury Roman villas of Stabiae, located to the south of Pompeii, were also buried in ash with the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. This review of a museum show at the Complesso di San Nicolo in Ravenna describes some of the fresco paintings that have been recovered.  

A metal detectorist has discovered the oldest known Roman coin in Britain.  

Ten-thousand-year-old flint tools and charcoal have been uncovered in Birmingham, England. “We have found stone age tools in other parts of Birmingham, … but they had been displaced. This area was in a hollow and had not been disturbed. We could see evidence of the whole settlement,” said Mike Hodder, Birmingham City Council archaeologist.  

A 20,000-year-old stone hearth is being called the oldest evidence of human settlement in Taiwan.  

An image of an angel near the Haghia Sophia’s dome has been revealed by restoration workers. The church’s Byzantine mosaics were covered with plaster when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453.    

The Dutch government and the Leiden University Medical Center have returned the severed head of King Badu Bonsu II to Ghana. Maj. Gen. Jan Verveer took the head in 1838, in retaliation for the killing of two Dutch emissaries whose heads were displayed in the king’s home. 

Five Roman shipwrecks were discovered off the west coast of Italy, in deep water near the island of Ventotene. The ships span a period of 1,000 years, and may have sunk while heading for the island in stormy seas.

After squatters were evicted from a shanty town in Lima, Peru, archaeologists moved in to excavate a burial site from the Ychsma civilization, dating from 1000 to 1400 A.D.  

Agriculture-based settlements on Cyprus may be older than previously thought. Excavations at the site of Politiko-Troullia have revealed households built around a communal courtyard, and evidence of animal husbandry and crop processing, that are between 3,500 and 4,000 years old.  

A 1,000-year-old cowshed was uncovered in northern Iceland. The shed had a stone floor covered with turf, and held 18 to 20 stalls made of wooden panels.  

The ancient Maya at Tikal practiced forest management, according to paleoethnobotanist David Lentz of the University of Cincinnati, until they were conquered in the Late Classic period by the people of Calakmul, who built large temples requiring considerable resources.  

Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., has filed an appeal to the court ruling ordering the surrender of silver and gold coins and objects to Spain. The treasure was salvaged from a shipwreck code-named “Black Swan.”  

A grant from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program will fund the search for the exact site of the 1846 Battle of San Pasqual, fought in California between U.S. and Mexican soldiers. “I’m 100 percent sure where the monument is is not where it took place. That was a convenient place to put the monument back when it was first established in 1922, and it was a piece of property that the state could, quite frankly, buy from a private owner,” said Richard Carrico of San Diego State University.  

Tour Herodium and the tomb of King Herod the Great with archaeologist Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University. After 35 years of searching, Netzer found Herod’s burial site in 2007.  

Members of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill want to examine a cemetery on the edge of the University of North Carolina. The cemetery had been divided into sections by race. “We want to get a better understanding of where things are in the cemetery,” said Director of Parks and Recreation Butch Kisiah.